The present invention relates to an image processor, and more particularly, to an apparatus and a method for driving a display panel, which can compress and decompress an image data to be displayed on the display panel.
In conjunction with advances in semiconductor and communication technologies, light and slim image display devices having high resolution are being developed. Examples of image display devices include a liquid crystal display (LCD), a field emission display (FED), a plasma display panel (PDP), and an electro-luminescence device (ELD).
Generally, an image display device includes a display panel and a display panel driver. The display panel driver stores digital image data received from an image source and converts the digital image data into analog signals.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a conventional image display device.
Referring to FIG. 1, the conventional image display device includes a display panel 140 and a display panel driver 100. The display panel driver 100 includes an RGB interface 110, a memory 120, and a digital to analog (D/A) converter 130. The RGB interface 110 receives and transfers digital image data of RGB unit pixels, which are supplied an image source. The memory 120 stores the image data without compression or conversion. The D/A converter 130 converts the image data stored in the memory 120 into analog signals and outputs the converted analog signals to the display panel 140.
However, because the image data supplied from the image source is stored in the memory 120 through the RGB interface 110 without compression or conversion, the conventional display panel driver 100 has a problem in that the capacity of the memory 120 must be at least large enough to process the number of bits in the image data. For this reason, when a test of the memory is conducted, the test will take an extensive amount of time to complete.